blah blah and the story of fes
it's possible that downstairsdave reads this blog because the hose that was splayed out over the sidewalk all fall and winter is neatly wound up in its place. coincidence? maybe. :)
what he doesn't know is we made the best cinnamon buns this week. big gooey ones. congratulations to us.
on friday i went to hang out with the bud of all buds--the fat one herself--fatima. i hadn't been to her house in a long time but not much had changed. samah was home sick from day care and thus we watched many episodes of paw patrol. this is the first time i really watched paw patrol and i'm left with many questions. why is the mayor's voice like that? why does she have a pet chicken? why does chickalita have an ankle bracelet? is she under purse arrest? why is that guy always wearing a purple tux? isn't that a bit too dressy for every day life? fatima says she doesn't watch it. she zones out. when mr. d came home with janvie, janvie wasn't happy to see me. she spent the first couple of hours completely avoiding me in a different part of the condo. fatima needed a lie down and me and samah built towers with blocks and then knocked them down. then we did puzzles. much later in the night janvie warmed up to me a tiny bit when samah and i started hitting the birthday helium balloon at each other. janvie liked that. samah kept asking "are you ready as you'll ever be??!?" fatima ordered some pasta for us from door dash. they got her salad wrong. samah wanted to eat all of daman's chicken. janvie's little 2 year old head poked up just over the table as she enjoyed a pasta nirvana. i went home before they went to bed.
on saturday i spent most of the day editing photos. the day just passed. i left briefly to buy a few groceries.
today i went to church and it was great. the talks and topics talked about in sunday school were exactly what i needed. sometimes that just happens and i'm so grateful when it does. i felt strengthened. heather came over in the afternoon for some pasta lunch and some talk about our road trip and possible places we would like to include. then i had stake choir. we're singing some beautiful songs and one boring song. that's not bad. i got the seat with a broken arm rest. that's bad. but i handled it with grace if i say so myself.
anyways here's the story of fes:
i came to fes from erg chebbi in the sahara desert. i had a spiritual birthday morning watching the sun rise alone on the sand dunes before jumping in the jeep and heading back to the hotel we started from the day before. abdeilah, our driver was supposed to pick gina, my budget traveling buddy and i up there. we got there at 7am and enjoyed a breakfast with all the other people but little to little they all left and gina and i were still waiting for abdeilah. we felt nervous because the unscrupulous hotel owners had tried to tell us we didn't have a ride to fes, to try to get more money out of us. luckily i got abdeilah's number from anas who had called him many times before he picked me up at the beginning of this tour. anas didn't join me for the desert tour and was meeting me in fes. anyways, after calling anas and then calling abdeilah and then anas calling abdeilah we found out he was being held up by the luxory 5, as i had come to call them. it was them making us late. finally he came to pick us up as we sat alone in the hotel courtyard with the sun beating down on us. he apologized with the prayer hands to heart as we headed with our backpacks to the van.
it was a long day of driving. unlike on the way to the sahara, on the way to fes we made very few stops. we drove through valleys and oasis-es, and up into mountains and forests. we saw men walking on the sides of the road with their hooded ...er...cloaks? and many children on bikes. i was looking forward to seeing the monkeys that live in the mountains on the way to fes. they are called barbary macaques and sure enough abdeilah stopped on the side of the road in a forest where other people had stopped. but it was kind of a sad spectacle. there were a bunch of tourists feeding the monkeys junk food and people selling food to tourists to feed the monkeys. i didn't feed any. gina and i just stood and watched until it was time to get back in the van.
we stopped in some small town for lunch but the luxery 5 were restless and full of mutiny. they didn't like how we were brought to tourist restaurants that were more expensive so they rebelled. they went across the street and bought themselves shawermas and fries. and we got up to go before abdeilah was ready and he seemed quite put out about it.
our only other stop was in this city called ifrane in the mountains. it's weird because it's built like a swiss ski town. all the houses are a frame western houses. but there was nothing really to see. we were all anxious to get to fes. as we got closer and closer to fes, the world got greener and greener. i saw grass for about the first time in morocco. when we pulled up to the the bab bejloud (blue gate)i was happy to see anas there waiting for me. i hugged gina good bye but forgot to get her contact info, and said a hearty good bye to abdeilah who seemed to really like anas, and a friendly good bye to the fab five.
anas took my suitcase and led me through the blue gate, ie. bab bejloud--say it. you'll enjoy it. fes is called the cultural capital of morocco. it's old medinas with narrow roads have apparently not changed much in hundreds of years. the roads are very very narrow and people with wheel barrows and carts have a business transporting goods . there are also donkeys and horses. but there's barely room for a horse. a man yells loudly as he goes to warn everyone about the horse and everyone basically flattens themselves against the walls and in doorways of shops as the horse walks by laden with it's heavy load.
it seemed like anas took me far into the jumble that is the ancient medina of fes (by the way fes has 2 walled medinas but i spent most of my time in this one) but we hadn't gone that far before anas turned down a crack between two buildings that turned out to be our hotel's 'street'. i could easily touch both sides. the door was so narrow that i coudldn't go through it with my back pack on. and inside the door there is a tiny desk squished to one side and one can step directly on the first step of the stairs going up from the doorway without stepping on the floor inside first. the stairs are those winding wedge tiled stairs that are everywhere. the first thing anas shows me is his bathroom and then a couple more steps up is my bedroom. my bedroom has a double bed and a little table and many many electrical sockets. i think i counted 7 at one point. it has windows into the hall that can be opened and closed and little bathroom that can only be locked from the outside and that has a tiny little wooden window that opens directly over the medina streets. i liked to have it open and hear the hustle and bustle down below.
up a couple more steps and we reached the main sitting area that had couches lining the walls and a high ceiling all the way up to the top floor. it was a square room and had 2 more bedrooms off of it. one had a french girl and a moroccan girl with a beautiful trilling laugh in it. hitcham was the teenage boy who was running the family run guest home for the next couple of days. he was super nice and helpful.
anas gave me a colourful moroccan bag for my birthday. we decided to go out to have something to eat. there was a restaurant i wanted to try called cafe clock. it's kind of a hipster fusion restaurant. hitcham showed us how to get there. it was just a street over. we climbed to the very top floor of the restaurant. you could eat on any of the 4 or 5 floors but we kept going until we got to the roof. we were surrounded by the rooftops of the neighbouring buildings. they were so close you could almost step on to them. all the roof tops of fes seemed to be welcoming areas to sit and relax, with plants and benches and tables and cushions. the ragged rooftops surrounded us.
i ordered a camel burger and had a date milk shake. anas, who cannot try new things chose the only thing he knew from the menu, none other than the ubiquitous tajine. he seemed bewildered that there was no moroccan salad, but got the same green salad as me. we stayed there a long time--until they were closing.
the next morning i woke up and wanted to have a shower but couldn't find my conditioner. i wanted you to know that. so i had a shower and didn't wash my hair and went up the stairs winding from the sitting area to the roof where there were tables and one could be fed breakfast there. there were also 2 rooms that were on the roof. anas was already up there and after exploring the roof we were served breakast which included bread and jam and tea (mint and hot water and sugar for me), black olives and orange juice. this is how anas jams his bread.
you could even go a little higher, on top of one of the roof top rooms.
the night before when we came out of cafe clock we saw this stall on the street where men were stuffing bread full of yummy looking meat and we decided that is what we would eat today. so we found the shop and sat ourselves down on a bench directly beside the street and waited for our sandwich. it was super cheap and super yummy. it was a mix of meats including turkey and tomato and spices. so delicious. someone told us it was a berber kabob but we knew he was just saying that because i was a tourist. anyways we loved them so much we got it again 2 more times before we left fes.
i bought my first item. red leather slippers called babouche. it was my first time successfully bargaining. anas helped me. he translated too. the little man was cute. he licked my slippers 3 times which i thought was super weird. anas said it was to show that the dye wouldn't come off. he also acted out to me how i could roll them up and put them in my pocket. he asked me 120 durham for them and i got them for 70 which isn't bad. not excellent but not bad. it's the equivilent of around 10 dollars. i felt quite elated and happy after that first haggling experience. when we got back to our guest house we hung out in the sitting area for a while looking at pics. 2 italian couples arrived that night and as i went to bed i heard anas talking to them about football.
the next morning i found my conditioner and so i could wash my hair. heave a sigh of relief guys. this time our breakfast on the roof included a new wonder. something called schfanj which is kind of like the cross between a doughnut and a coissant. they were delicious. on this day i had a few things to mark off my list since it was our last full day in fes. one of the things i wanted to see were the 'golden' doors of the fes palace. so that was the fist place we went. it was outside the medina so we took a taxi. the doors aren't really made from gold. they are brass. but they are pretty amazing. you can't go in the palace but you can fawn over the doors as much as you want. and i wanted to fawn A LOT.
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